Ovid

Right it is to be taught even by the enemy.

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March43 BC – 17 AD) was a Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. Ranked alongside Virgil and Horace as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature, Ovid was generally considered the greatest master of the elegiac couplet.

Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.

Book I, 84 (translated by John Dryden); on the creation of Man

Then the omnipotent Father with his thunder made Olympus tremble, and from Ossa hurled Pelion.

Book I, 154

Compare: "Heav'd on Olympus tott'ring Ossa stood; On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood", Alexander Pope, The Odyssey of Homer, Book xi, line 387; "would have you call to mind the strength of the ancient giants, that undertook to lay the high mountain Pelion on the top of Ossa, and set among those the shady Olympus", François Rabelais, Works, book iv. chap. xxxviii.

Medio tutissimus ibis.

You will be safest in the middle.

Variant translation: You will go most safely by the middle way.

Book II, 137

Inopem me copia fecit.

Plenty has made me poor.

Variant translation: Abundance makes me poor.

Book III, 466

Causa latet, vis est notissima

The cause is hidden, but the result is well known.

Variant translation: The cause is hidden; the effect is visible to all.

Book IV, 287

Fas est et ab hoste doceri.

Right it is to be taught even by the enemy.

Book IV, 428

Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor.

I see better things, and approve, but I follow worse.

Book VII, 20

Sunt superis sua iura

The gods have their own rules.

Book IX, 500

Supremum vale.

A last farewell.

Book X, 62

Ars adeo latet arte sua.

So art lies hid by its own artifice.

Book X, 252

Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.

Thus all things are but altered, nothing dies.

Book XV, 165 (translated by John Dryden); on the transmigration of souls

No species remains constant: that great renovator of matter
Nature, endlessly fashions new forms from old: there’s nothing
in the whole universe that perishes, believe me; rather
it renews and varies its substance. What we describe as birth
is no more than incipient change from a prior state, while dying
is merely to quit it. Though the parts may be transported
hither and thither, the sum of all matter is constant.